khel

Rather than necro'ing an old thread with discussion that isn't very relevant now, I hope that it is ok to discuss prioritizing debuffs in WotLK raiding and dealing with the debuff limit here.

I am just using a sample raid composition to make discussion easier:
MMO-Champion RaidComp
I know that the best personal dps specs are constantly evolving but this is just an example of what a typical raid group might look like.

*Note that some overlapping debuffs were skipped, such as Trauma because Mangle is already applied. Do these still take up individual debuff slots or has it been fixed?

How will your guild deal with managing these debuffs? In the past we have avoided using affliction warlocks, had rogues using instant poison instead of deadly, asked hunters to avoid using serpent stings or pets that apply debuffs, and for druids who might be dpsing to skip rake and use ferocious bite instead of rip. Even after doing this for this sample raid setup though, we are still over the debuff cap! Do we have to exclude a dps warrior or a warlock to free up these debuffs and grab another hunter instead?

How will you prioritize these debuff slots?

 

Arakan

This thread has a lot of relevant information and discussion regarding this topic.

 

Ingmar

At the moment I can't say much about a lot of other debuff slots since I don't know their exact damage comparison, but at least 1 hunter should be keeping up serpent sting if you want them to optimize DPS. This is because of [Glyph of Steady Shot], which basically means that your hunters' DPS goes up ~3-4%. Cycling in a sting for all of them would be a waste of mana / time for them, one is enough.

Also, a few things you've missed:
- You forgot mindflay for the priests, and the debuffs are per-priest.
- 1 Warlock should be using curse of the elements to increase magic damage by 10%.
- I think elemental shamans use up a debuff slot for their totem of wrath, at least in PvP I noticed the totem giving me a debuff.

As for prioritizing, I'd say have rogues drop deadly poison for instant for starters, and I'm not really sure if demo-shout and shadow embrace stack. Also, earth and moon will probably overwrite the warlock CoE when it procs, but will need re-application after. Not sure if that's really optimal to use. Other debuffs I'll leave to people more experienced at 80

It takes skill if it's my class. The guy I am playing against on the other hand is a faceroller. Now when I am facerolling, that's my skill you're seeing.

 

khel

Lots of good information there and relates to this topic, but imo these are separate discussions.

Are you sure about totem of wrath? I guess it works similarly to heart of the crusader then, but only applies to spell crit. (In the setup I listed there is no elemental shaman anyway.) E&M makes CoE unnecessary...it is applied and refreshed on every single wrath or starfire cast. I didn't realize that mindflay still consumed a debuff slot though...just makes the problem worse.

 

Ingmar

According to this wow-forums topic, you're indeed right about heart of the crusader and TOW not stacking, but both are a debuff.

I was under the impression that earth and moon was a chance, but it is indeed a 100% chance, my bad.

It takes skill if it's my class. The guy I am playing against on the other hand is a faceroller. Now when I am facerolling, that's my skill you're seeing.

 

klüger

Spriests can use Glyph of Mind Flay to remove one debuffslot pr. spriest.

 

mek

I recall reading a blue post that mechanically, the Glyph of Mind Flay doesn't remove the snare, it reduces the snare to 0%, so I would guess it still eats a debuff slot.

 

Rannasha

Earth and Moon is a 100% proc on 2 of the standard spam-spells for Moonkins. The basic rule is that whenever there's a Moonkin around, the Warlocks need not worry about CoE (with obvious exceptions of different people dpsing different targets). This doesn't reduce the number of debuffs however, since the Warlock will just switch to a damaging curse.

 

Ktharsis

For your MM hunters, Serpent Sting represents significantly more than 3-4% of DPS because they need a sting up in order to trigger the Chimera Shot effect.

For non-MM hunters, I had thought from earlier testing that you had to have your own Serpent Sting up to get the benefit from the glyph. Has it now been confirmed that this is not the case? I missed that post if so, and haven't been able to find it.

 

Ingmar

He has 3 BM hunters in his setup, but obviously it would be different for MM's, yes. A nice synergy would be to have 2BMs and 1 MM to keep the sting up with chimera.

Although I'm not sure, the description doesn't mention anything about "your own" serpent sting, thus I assumed that wouldn't be the case. I'd be extremely disappointed if it were the case that you personally have to keep the sting up for the glyph. It's like asking every mage to keep their own scorch up.

It takes skill if it's my class. The guy I am playing against on the other hand is a faceroller. Now when I am facerolling, that's my skill you're seeing.

 

Uglesh

If you do bring Affliction Locks, you might want to ensure they DO NOT spec into Imp Shadow Bolt as it will just push another debuff off that will yeild greater benefit.

Sadly in the current state, people will have to definately make some hard choices and possibly sacrifice some dps to avoid more critical debuffs being pushed off.

 

Ralnar

I'm pretty sure that Imp Shadow Bolt proc is now the following personal buff and no longer a debuff:
Shadow Mastery - Spell - World of Warcraft

 

Romerz

Combat rogues actually have a talent called Savage Combat now, which requires the target to be poisoned in order to increase the rogues AP by 2% and dmg to that target by 1%. Obviously Mutilate rogues require poisoned targets in order to do 50% more damage aswell. I won't even pretend to weight this against other classes, as I just don't know enough about them.

Having rash statements like this cannot come up with a decent solution however. I would expect it to require a rather time consuming process of actually working out just what are the best solutions in order to maximize DPS overall for the raid. This may actually be near impossible for 99% of raids who don't use the exact same raid setup, with the exact same players and with the exact same play style of those players and having the encounters be very linear.

 

erragal

Until we get some indication from blizzard that they actually intend to fix this rather serious issue the best thing to discuss is which debuffs should be the first to go. As a balance druid I can safely say removing glyphed/T7 insect swarm is a fairly minor overall DPS hit (On the order of 100-200 DPS depending on wrath usage) especially considering its' lack of crit scaling.


I don't believe anyone is so intimately familiar with all the various class DPS intricacies to make judgements without some guidance. Certainly we could go research each individual class thread, but the advantage to this thread is having various people pool their knowledge and establish some standards.

Some Debuffs that need to be added:

From my understanding for hunters the best non-BM pets are cats or scorpids both of which apply a very significant DPS dot that scales extremely well.

I was under the impression unholy DK's had two additional debuffs they took up. One is their CoE/E&M Ebon Plaguebringer effect that still goes up because it has a self-benefit as well. I'm not personally familiar with the other.

Flame Shock for elemental shaman is necessary to their DPS.



Some information we definitely need:

What is the drop off from deadly poison to instant poison for various rogue specs?

What are the lowest DPS dots for the various classes with multiples?

 

Evil

In terms of priests, you cannot drop Vampiric Touch or Shadow Word Pain because they make up a significant proportion of DPS. Mind Flay's debuff is also non-negotiable. Vampiric Embrace, in its current form, is eminently skippable if you don't want or need the group healing. Misery and Shadow Weaving may or may not be necessary - Shadow Weaving is a 10% personal DPS loss if they priest cannot keep it up, so it is an important debuff, but not more so than 3% more raid damage. Misery is similarly skippable, but I cannot conceive of a scenario in which it does not merit its debuff slot. In summary:

VT: Your priest won't thank you for making him skip it, because it will fuck his DPS.
SW:P: Your priest won't thank you for making him skip it, because it will fuck his DPS.
Mind Flay: Your priest won't thank you for making him skip it, because it will fuck his DPS.
Shadow Weaving: Your priest won't thank you for making him skip it, because it will fuck his DPS.
VE: Eminently missable if you don't want or need the group healing.
Misery: Theoretically skippable, but almost certainly worth its slot.

Since I haven't played WotlK at all, this information may not be entirely accurate. But it probably is.

 

Darian_TruBlade

So long as there is a single poison on the target, even a sting, Mutilate should do full damage. The issue is the damage difference between Eviscerate and Envenom (including additional Poison procs). Additionally, if you're counting on your Assassination rogue for your +3% crit buff over a Retribution Paladin or Elemental Shaman, then you have to assume they'll be using Deadly.

It would be possible to Destruction Warlocks to drop Corruption. Dropping CoA as well would have a much bigger impact. Also, only one Warlock needs to have Immolate on a target for Incinerate's bonus or for Conflagrate to work.

It's important to note that Blood Death Knight taking Dancing Rune Weapon have the potential to place 6 debuffs on the target (Heart Strike, Blood Plague, Icy Touch and Mark of Blood as well as another Blood Plague and Icy Touch from the Blade), 7 if for some reason you wish them to use Razorice.

"A man's IQ, yearly income, sexual prowess, ingenuity, physical appearance and generally every other aspect of his character can be condensed down to four digits: his Arena rating." - Zechsy [70 Rogue - Skullcrusher (EU) - 10/23/2007]

 

Meltface

Shadow Weaving is a personal buff now, not a mob debuff.

Misery also adds 15% damage done by Mind Flay and Mind Blast. Not being able to use Misery also severly hurts priest DPS.

 

Akhtal

Considering Shadow Weaving is a self-buff now... out of the debuffs you wrote earlier, only VE is skippable, unless you want your spriest to wand between mindblasts... Not speccing into Misery is a 15% damage loss to casted spells (non-DOTs), so you don't really want that either (roughly 10% loss for the priest, and causing all the casters to gem for more +hit)

edit : beaten to it.

 

PSGarak

I thought that Shadow Waving was turned into a self-buff like improved shadowbolt.

Misery and Improved Faerie Fire are the same effect, one or the other can be skipped. If IFF adds the effect without an additional debuff slot beyond the normal FF, you should go with that instead of misery.

Savage Combat is a strict AP increase, not a conditional one. That's the "selfless buffer" rider on the 2% physical damage effect. The physical damage is the same as Blood Frenzy. What's more important, actually, is that mutilate rogues need poison on their target to get good damage. I think a hunter poison will suffice, although I'm not sure, and they sure like Deadly so they can pop Envenom.
[e] Well, beaten on all three points separately.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Garak.png

 

Ktharsis

Conflagrate consumes Immolate, though, so each destruction lock is probably going to be casting their own Immolate. I have no idea how long the typical lock lets Immolate tick before consuming it, but it would be pretty close to impossible to have multiple destro locks cooperate with one another to ensure that only one Immolate is up at a time.

Realistically, if the OP's list has 55 debuffs and the limit is still at 40, it's not just going to be a case of "oh, I guess I can do without Siphon Life" (which isn't even included in the 55). Assuming every class is present in a 25man raid, either Blizz has to raise the debuff limit or someone is going to have to gimp their dps. Which means we need to try to quantify the dps benefit of each debuff as much as possible, rather than simply saying "it would really hurt to lose X" - they're all going to hurt. For example, if Serpent Sting is worth 5% of a non-MM hunter's dps, it might turn out that that's the easiest sacrifice for a raid to make, but you have to know what you're comparing it to. And of course some buffs benefit only the caster while others benefit all melee/ranged dps so we have to make sure we're comparing apples and apples.

Unless the debuff limit is getting raised, a rigorous analysis of the numbers is probably important or else no one is going to want to give up a spell because "my dps is gimped without it." It's important to make them understand that the overall raid dps will be gimped even more if someone else has to give something up.

 

PSGarak

Having warlocks collaborate on the Immolate would probably not work out very well. There's a talent that gives a bonus to Conflag if the immolate has been up for over 10 seconds, and it's something the warlock would want as often as possible. There's a three-second downtime during the GCD and winding up the next immolate so with massive coordinate you may be able to afford less than one debuff slot per warlock, but we're talking like 3 slots for 4 warlocks, not 1 for all of them.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Garak.png

 

level12wizard

As mentioned, Death Knights can bring more debuffs to the table. Heart Strike, Dancing Rune Weapon, Mark of Blood, and two MORE diseases from Dancing Rune Weapon were mentioned.

Depending on spec, the debuff from Summon Gargoyle can also be put up.

The debuff "Stroke" is a side effect of Heart Strike, if you have a Blood DK it will always be up. I see no reason why it should show up more than once though.

Ebon Plaguebringer will show up once no matter how many Unholy Death Knights you bring, and it should override and prevent things like Earth & Moon.

If your Death Knights have the Improved Icy Touch buff (any tank build), it should override and prevent things like Thunderclap and the Druid/Paladin equivalents.


I say should because Ebon Plaguebringer and Icy Touch count as diseases for the DK that would be up anyway, and provide more effects (extra damage for the DK) than their counterparts.

 

Anthraxx

You can't skip Misery, 3% hit for caster classes is invaluable at this moment.

About locks: Corruption is skipped as deep fire anyway, CoA must be on, talented curse does awesome damage and losing Molten Core procs is a significant dps loss.

On the other hand I've seen locks using only CoA, immolate, incinerate as a filler rotation and doing really good damage. This way we could PROBABLY work with 1 immolate on target taking only 1+ (1 / lock_count) slots.

But is it worth it?

 

PSGarak

3% hit is given by Improved Faerie Fire. For everyone else, there's no reason to prefer one or the other.

At this point, I think it would be useful to go through the bighuge list of raid debuffs, and find which classes have some personal benefit tied to their debuff. As an example, both moonkin and shadow priests have a personal benefit tied to their 3% spell hit effect that not only requires the talent, but also requires the debuff itself to be present. Spriests get the aforementioned buff to a few of their nukes, moonkin now apparently get 3% crit against a target with FF up. Now, the wording on both classes would seem to indicate that one character can benefit from the debuff cast by another character of the same class (boomkin may even benefit from non-improved faerie fire), so we only need one per class present. But this means that some classes will require redundant buffs even after they're no longer necessary for the raids. I much prefer the Malediction model where the benefit is not tied to the debuff.


Anyways, ones I've found:
Spell Hit: Both effects, Misery and Improved Faerie Fire, grant additional personal effects to the casters.
Spell Damage: Ebon Plaguebringer is an extra DK disease, and buffs disease damage. CoE grants spell penetration, which is generally useless. Earth and Moon provides no extra benefit.
Mob Hit: Insect Swarm has a DoT attached. Scorpid Sting has no additional benefit in itself. A Marksman hunter can Chimara Shot Scorpid Sting for a disarm effect, but all hunters will generally prefer Serpent Sting for a variety of reasons.
Cast Speed: Slow triggers Torment the Weak. The other three effects have no impact, and Slow may or may not be the only way to active Torment the Weak.
Healing Taken: Wound Poison counts as poisoning for Mutilate. Deadly is still prefered for Envenom over Eviscerate, but if debuffs are tight and MS is needed, WP counts as both at once.
Attack Slow: Icy Touch does damage and is a disease. The other three effects have no personal benefit, although Judgements of the Just does Judgement damage on application.


Ones without personal benefit attached for any class:
Major Armor
Minor Armor (but see Spell Hit, above)
Attack Power
Bleed Damage (Mangle used to provide bonus to a few cat attacks, these were recoded to benefit from Trauma)
Crit Chance
Physical Damage
Spell Crit Chance


The only case of ambiguity is actually the spell hit scenario, where both spriests and boomkin want to be the ones applying the debuff. All other debuffs have either no or one class gaining additional effects from being the applyer. The only exception of note is that CoE provides spell penetration, and there will likely be approximately 2 bosses in the next two years with resistances.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Garak.png

 

khel

For moonkins, it is probably more personal dps not to have to refresh FF despite the extra 3% crit, unless it gets refreshed with the 3% hit/crit bonuses when ferals refresh it.

Adding living bomb for the mages

I hope that Blizzard raises the debuff cap soon because right now it feels like this is the most important thing to consider when choosing specs and raid composition, rather than which specs and classes can provide the most thoroughput.